So I'm going to right a little of my experience with non-profits (2) in which I mainly did fundraising. For some reason the first director of the non-profit thought I would be good at “begging “ and I ended up doing it for years and liking it. Here are some strategies and tips I used ( remember this applies to my country, my environment, my context, and a specific nonprofit).
1
From the button up: after studying, talking and experimenting with fundraising I found that the most humble, with less income and more simple people are the ones that give the most for nonprofits (in time and money, relatively speaking). So I came up with the idea to make a “live fundraising” where one day of the year hundreds of volunteers will go to the places with most foot-traffic and ask for money in little “moneyboxes”. To be effective you need to be in at least 30 places concentrated in a small area that generates a lot of noise and that bring the attention of people. So the idea is to create awareness and that one person will see you at least twice in the same day. Jumping into buses, trains and public transportation to ask for money is encouraged. I dont know if you can do this in the U.S. (legal).
2
Monthly partners: many people will give you money because they want to help or feel guilty that they are not doing enough. So you can signed them up with their credit card, and this creates that you don't need to see them every month and only once a year. To be able to sign them for the first time, what we did was talk to the company they worked for and encourage that the management would ask the employees that they have to donate 2 hours of their time in the year. They were trapped! ☺However said no looked like an ass**le because this is about helping people in worst conditions, so the social pressure of their peers will move them to come to our volunteers day!
The two hours are gold for you, not because of the time, but because you have their whole attention. So you need to create an environment that will make a 1:1 conversion from “I volunteer once a year” into “I’m a monthly partner” (credit card). To do so you need to get to their feelings. You need to create a situation where the feeling that they get it’s so strong that they feel compelled to sign up. I our case our non-profit build houses for homeless people, so we took the employees of the companies to help us build. When a child, barefoot, with almost no cloth, tell you thank you and hugs you there is no better feeling (this is what we found out after several times). Move the feelings from “ego” (or show off) into the beautiful feeling of really enjoying helping others and making a difference.
3
Big foundations and families offices: so this are the most difficult and for the ones that you actually need a connection (networking). Its difficult to get in front of them and more important to make them care. I actually use this strategies in this order to be able to accomplish the third one. So first we created the first one and become “famous” or well known because we were all over the city. This helped us get some companies on board (remember that if companies are related to the foundation better, e.g: suppliers of services or goods) and with the connections of the companies plus some press releases we got to talk to the foundation to try to get the big bucks. You need to hustle your way in.
I know you think this is not extremely helpful information for founders of startups but I believe it actually is. The lessons you need to get from this are:
